Architect Richard Rogers has died at the age of 88. He was one of the designers of the Pompidou Center, which houses the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Its huge, brightly colored pipes had caused much ink to flow. The man had received, for his work, the Pritzker Prize in 2007, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for architecture.
It is the rise of fascism that pushes the family of Richard Rogers, born July 23, 1933 in Florence to a doctor father and a mother former student of the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, to leave Italy for s’ move to London in 1938. Studies are not the strong point of the young boy, but he still manages to integrate the school of architecture in London, despite failing the entrance exams.
He completed his architectural degree at Yale, United States, in 1962. There he met Norman Foster. Upon their return to England in 1964, they and their wives founded “Team 4”, a firm known for its architectural designs inspired by technology.
Tube-shaped constructions
Together, they carried out the first tube-shaped constructions, with bright colors and large bay windows: the “high tech” style was born. In 1971, it was the consecration: Richard Rogers, associated with Renzo Piano and Peter Rice won the competition for the Center Pompidou, the National Museum of Modern Art, in Paris.
Huge scandal! The trio sent the piping and technical infrastructure to the outside: multicolored ventilation ducts and caterpillar-shaped escalators appear on the front façade. And this in the middle of the Beaubourg district, one of the oldest in Paris.
One of the most renowned architects in the world
One of the most renowned architects in the world, Richard Rogers has accumulated some 400 commissions characterized by light structures, the ubiquity of prefabricated elements and experimentation with cutting-edge materials.
Before the renovation of the Montparnasse district in Paris, he designed the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, offices in Berlin on Potsdamer Platz, a terminal at Barajas international airport in Madrid, the “Three World Trade Center ”in New York and the“ Millennium Dome ”in London, curiosity of the festivities of the year 2000 which earned him the wrath of Prince Charles. Ennobled, Lord Rogers of Riverside sits from 1996 in the House of Lords in the ranks of Labor.
(with AFP)
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